The Building Bridges Family Advisory Network developed this guide as a tool to support providers in their efforts to improve the experience and outcomes for children and families. The goal of this guide is to deepen family-driven practice and promote better engagement with families.

This document was created to provide advice to residential agencies, community agency executives, board members, practitioners, young people and their families, policy makers, and advocates about the elements and processes necessary to create culturally and linguistically competent residential programs. The Guidelines address the organizational structure, practices, and service delivery approaches that improve cultural and linguistic competence and are informed by implementation research and emerging promising practices.

This document contains information on several identified fiscal solutions developed to support operationalizing BBI principles into practice. Examples demonstrate that innovative work integrating residential care within a community-based system of care is happening across the country and inform readers of successful strategies that may have application in their state/county/community/provider efforts to implement BBI principles.

This white paper is an effort to record the overarching themes of the rich, exploratory conversations of the Building Bridges Summit meetings – and offer a sample of the many detailed practice suggestions and challenges that were discussed.